The Quietest Place
by Lee Savage
Summary: Sokka visits Azula in the asylum.


Sokka expects screaming and straitjackets when he enters the asylum, but it's one of the quietest places in the world. He doesn't know why Zuko insists that he should visit Azula. Zuko is desperate, and his sister is a bigoted, misguided individual. Like his father, Zuko reasons.

Sokka is the face of everything she despises, yet they share similarities. Both are more reserved emotionally, both can think on their feet. If she can see the true face of those she persecuted, then perhaps Azula will relent.

She sits on a bed on the opposite side of the entrance to her straight-edged room. It is blue and white. Calming, muted colors, an orderly explains. Vibrant hues only agitate the patients, much like babies will cry in a room with obscenely bright colors.

"It seems the world truly is falling apart," Azula says, "when you are my darling brother's last resort." She has her legs crossed, her shoulders relaxed. He takes a seat on the ground, which is a soft carpet.

"You seem—okayish," Sokka says reluctantly, scratching the back of his head, "y'know, besides being evil."

Azula laughs to herself, not looking at him and appearing perfectly content with herself. Her hair is loose, yet combed. "I prefer the terms 'loyal' and 'competent,' but I suppose I'll take being considered evil in a world of simpletons and traitors." She leans forward with a tiger-wolf's grin. "Do you really believe that everyone is rallying behind my brother? Please."

"Well, you're just brainwashed." Yeah, there are assassination attempts, but the transition to peace is never easy. She's trying to trick him here—again. Sokka schools his expression to imitate her coolness. How can a firebender—someone who produces hotter flames than others, nonetheless—be so impassionate?

"Brainwashed?" Azula's eyebrows raise wryly. "No. A brainwashed soldier would have merely captured her brother and uncle and returned them, thus leaving the Avatar unchecked and the last stronghold of the Earth Kingdom intact. A brainwashed soldier wouldn't have murdered the Avatar, wouldn't have committed a grand act of subterfuge and taken over the last dwindling remnant of the Earth Kingdom." She lifts her chin.

"And look where it got you."

"It's bittersweet, I suppose," she says with a casual tilt of her head.

"The Fire Nation killed my mother."

"I would empathize, but that would require something to empathize with."

"You really don't care about the lives you've destroyed?" he says earnestly.

She looks past him pensively, as if spacing out. Her hands on her crossed legs, her voice level, she says, "Our nation has the best technology, the strongest warriors. We've accomplished great progress over the years."

"You 'accomplished' everything on the backs of unwilling people. Hard to 'progress' when you're starved for resources."

Azula replies without pause, "And why shouldn't we? If they are so weak, why shouldn't we herd them? Weed out those holding the world back, and it'll only be a land of the strong, the worthy." She speaks like someone gushing about a utopia. Paradise. Yet her world is a dead phoenix, crumpled and gray.

Despite his best efforts, Sokka's calmness begins to crack. "They're _people_."

"They could've grown in an emboldened era. The Fire Nation would've consolidated all of the savage cultures under one name, would've taught them wonders beyond their ken." She shakes her head. "But look at me, explaining this to a bumpkin."

Sokka grins without showing his teeth. "Look at me, listening to a psycho."

"Really," she says lightly, "that's a rather low blow."

"So, is it true that your own mom hated you?"

Azula clasps her hands together in her lap, her smile eerily wide. "She wanted a sweet, baby-faced, dimwitted doll of a girl who would dress up and drink tea and play nice. Oh, Zuzu thinks she's immaculate. She laughed with us about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground. We were children, and she was the adult. My perfect uncle and my loving mother simply guffawed at the image of a city collapsing under imperialistic conquerors. See, my dear, sweet 'Mommy' would be so disappointed in her genocidal monster of a daughter, but who says I didn't do it to make her laugh one last time?"

He tries to think of what it must be like, trying to fill her father's shoes; that's something he can "empathize" with. Yet, that's insulting to the sheer grandeur of her heartless, brazen vision.

"I'm sorry-well, I'm honestly not—but what did you plan?" she says. "You'd lift the broken, weeping princess off of her feet and woo her with your impeccable logic?" Zuko thinks such a cold person can be consoled by reason, but she's in a separate realm. "That's almost—just almost—foolishly noble enough to earn my genuine pity."

"Go ahead and say what you want. Be the martyr." He stands, his legs numb.

"Funny. They call me delusional." She smooths the creases in her attire. "I was told that the truly insane don't know that they are unstable. In that case, my mind must be in poor shape. Then again, given the current standards of 'righteous' thinking, perhaps being 'evil' in a backwards world is the true virtue."

The saddest fact of all? Despite her cruelty, her hatred, he almost enjoys her company. She's the face of the former Fire Nation, the embers left on his mother's corpse. Yet in another life, her craftiness would've been invaluable. She's talented, cunning. They could've invented stuff together, discussed battle strategies. But here she is, confined by her own amoral nature, attempting to convince him that she's just. Or is she?

"You know," he says, "I don't think you're trying to convince me of anything. After all, I'm a primitive Water Tribe savage, and you're the princess. I think you're trying to convince yourself. After all, you have nothing left. Must be lonely to only have yourself to trust."

So for the next few days, he rolls her words around in his mind, thinking of clever retorts and ways to refute her twisted viewpoints. Perhaps he'll do so until he's driven mad. Maybe they'll share bunks later in life.

Then, Sokka realizes that this is all Azula must do. Convince herself over and over again, in that quiet, quiet space, that she's justified. Plagued by insistent voices and faces. But they are imaginary, and there is only one person who can account for her crimes.

It almost—just almost—kills him inside.


End file.
